Netstars Signs Kaia (KAIA) MOU to Bring Stablecoin Payments to 700,000 Stores

Netstars-Kaia MOU Covers 700,000 Stores

Netstars, the Tokyo-listed payments company, signed a basic agreement (MOU) with the Kaia DLT Foundation on September 11, 2026 to expand real-world stablecoin payments across Asia, per the company's official announcement. The deal centers on StarPay, Netstars' multi-QR payment platform, which processes more than ¥2 trillion in annual trading volume across roughly 700,000 merchant locations in Japan. Under the MOU, the two parties will build an environment where stablecoins issued on Kaia can be used at Japanese brick-and-mortar stores, with a settlement structure that credits merchants in Japanese yen — shop owners accept digital-asset payments without ever holding the tokens themselves, removing price-volatility risk from the merchant side. Beyond domestic checkout, the agreement scopes support for stablecoins pegged to other Asian currencies, including the Korean won, Hong Kong dollar, Taiwan dollar, and major Southeast Asian currencies. One model under consideration targets inbound tourists: a visitor pays with a stablecoin tied to their home currency, while the store receives yen through existing terminals. The companies will also evaluate Kaia's Ratio, an on-chain foreign-exchange orchestration layer, for cross-currency exchange, liquidity provision, and merchant clearing — infrastructure that functions like a cross-border atomic swap between fiat-pegged tokens. Netstars frames the partnership as a concrete step in its StarPay-X initiative, which aims to connect its merchant and clearing infrastructure to Web3 financial services. The company is not starting from zero: it launched a store-facing Stablecoin Pay service on July 13, 2026 supporting USDC, USDT, and JPYC at a 0.98% tax-exempt fee, and has previously piloted USDC payments at Haneda Airport and run point-of-sale stablecoin trials at Lawson convenience stores.

HashPort Wallet Adds Native KAIA Support

In a parallel distribution push, the Kaia DLT Foundation confirmed that HashPort Wallet, the private-key-custody wallet service from Japanese Web3 firm HashPort, now officially supports the Kaia network. The wallet — which grew out of the EXPO2025 Digital Wallet, the official app of the Osaka-Kansai World Expo — has surpassed 1 million cumulative downloads, making it one of Japan's primary Web3 access points. Kaia users can now send and receive the native KAIA token, the yen-pegged stablecoin JPYC, USDT, and NFTs directly inside the wallet. HashPort's strategic alliance with telecom carrier KDDI adds further retail reach: the wallet can convert Lawson's Ponta loyalty points into virtual assets and push balances out to the au PAY quick-payment service, giving Kaia multiple touchpoints with Japan's everyday consumer-payment network. The underlying chain itself is a merger of two Asian super-app ecosystems — Kakao's Klaytn and LINE's Finschia combined in 2024 to form the EVM-compatible Kaia DeFi and payments layer, which now hosts more than 420 dApps and reaches a potential user base of over 250 million. The chain already carries live regional stablecoin implementations, including yen-denominated JPYC and the Indonesian rupiah-pegged IDRX, and has published a technical design covering issuance, settlement, and distribution for a won-pegged stablecoin developed through pilots with major Korean financial institutions including KB Kookmin Bank. Seo Sang-min, chairman of the Kaia DLT Foundation, said that for blockchain to take root in daily life it must “seep into the mobile apps people already use and existing offline payment infrastructure,” adding that the foundation intends to “aggressively expand” real-world stablecoin use cases across Asia, starting with Japan's million-wallet base and large merchant network. Readers tracking the market in real time can follow live spot and futures prices on Binance.

Cross-Border Asia Rail Takes Shape

Read together, the two announcements form a deliberate two-sided build: Netstars contributes demand-side distribution through 700,000 stores and ¥2 trillion in annual throughput, while HashPort supplies the consumer-side access layer through a million installed wallets. The Netstars announcement — the company's own release — sets the concrete scope: yen-settled checkout at StarPay merchants, feasibility work on multi-currency stablecoins, and joint verification of the Ratio FX layer. What remains undisclosed matters just as much: no launch date, no shortlist of which stablecoins go live first, and no fee schedule for the combined service have been published. Until those specifics land, the partnership is a framework rather than a product — but a framework that puts Kaia's stablecoin stack in front of more Japanese storefronts than any competing chain currently reaches.